Man of Steel Rakes in $21 Million Thursday Night

One of the most anticipated movies of the summer, Zack Snyder’s reboot of the Superman franchise with Man of Steel, finally opened last night in North America with a lot of expectations about how well it might do in terms of giving Warner Bros. a chance to do for the DC Universe what Marvel Studios has been doing with their characters.

The action adventure got off to a strong start, bringing in an estimated $21 million last night, $9 million from midnight screenings and $12 million from an earlier Thursday 7 pm screening with tickets sold exclusively through Walmart.

For those wondering what that means for Man of Steel‘s weekend outlook, we can look at some comparisons.

For instance, last summer, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises brought in $30.6 million in midnights and advance screenings on its way to a weekend take of $160.9 million, while the recent Iron Man 3 brought in $15.6 million in advance screenings even though that ended up doing better over the weekend to the tune of $174.1 million.

With Man of Steel falling somewhere in between, even with only $9 million from midnights, does bode well for it having a really strong opening weekend although the anticipation to see the movie might have driven a lot more people out at midnight and earlier to see the movie than usual.